The Cornbread Gospels (5 page)

M
AKES
8
WEDGES

Sylvia Teague, who lived in Eureka Springs for many years, was a recipe taster on my previous cookbook,
Passionate Vegetarian.
Friend and all-around trouper extraordinaire with an amazingly perspicacious palate, she was large-boned, rather quiet, and serious until you knew her—then: ribald, sly, wry, dry, and just uproarious.

This delicious, ultra–low-fat buttermilk cornbread, very easy, was the Teague family cornbread for decades—a straightforward, very tasty plain formula. This is so healthful and quick to make that you could eat it daily—as Ozark natives did (with bacon fat instead of oil) for generations.

Vegetable oil cooking spray

1 tablespoon butter

2 cups stone-ground yellow cornmeal

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups buttermilk, preferably measured into a 4-cup measure

2 eggs

1 tablespoon mild vegetable oil

1.
Preheat the oven to 400°F.

2.
Spray a 10-inch cast-iron skillet with oil, add the butter, and put it into the oven to heat. Meanwhile, stir together the cornmeal, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.

3.
In a smaller bowl, or in the 4-cup measure, beat the buttermilk with the eggs and oil.

4.
Combine the two mixtures. As always, be careful not to overbeat, stirring until wet and dry are just combined.

5.
Scrape the batter into the hot skillet and bake the cornbread until it is golden brown and crusty at the edges, 23 to 27 minutes. Serve hot, in wedges.

M
AKES
8
WEDGES

During one of the cooking classes I taught at the Biltmore Winery and Estate in North Carolina—at which I demo’d the Dairy Hollow House Skillet-Sizzled Cornbread (
page 12
) and Ronni’s Appalachian Cornbread (
following
)—I mentioned being at work on this book. After class, a woman named Virginia Brown came up to me and said, “You know, this really is good cornbread, just about as good as my grandmother Leora’s … I’ll e-mail it to you.” And she did. Thanks, Virginia!

Though the original was baked in a 10-by-16-inch glass baking dish, I prefer to bake it in a skillet.

Vegetable oil cooking spray

1 cup stone-ground white cornmeal

½ cup unbleached white flour

1¼ teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1½ teaspoons sugar

2 tablespoons butter

1 cup milk

1 cup buttermilk

1 egg

3 tablespoons mild vegetable oil

1.
Preheat the oven to 425°F. Spray a 10-inch cast-iron skillet with oil and set aside.

2.
Stir all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl, combining them well. Set aside.

3.
Now, add the butter to the prepared skillet and put it in the oven, to heat the skillet and melt the butter. Work quickly from here on out; you don’t want the butter to burn.

4.
Whisk together the wet ingredients in a medium bowl. With as few strokes as possible, combine the wet and dry ingredients.

5.
Remove the hot buttery skillet from the oven. Transfer the batter into the hot buttery skillet. Return the hot buttery now-filled-with-batter skillet to the oven.

6.
Bake the cornbread until it is barely browned, 25 to 30 minutes. Serve, hot, in wedges from the pan.

M
AKES
8
WEDGES

This is probably my favorite of the “plain” cornbreads. It’s the stripped-down cornbread my friend Ronni Lundy, born in Corbin, Kentucky, grew up eating. Ronni is the author of
Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes, and Honest Fried Chicken
, in which this recipe first appeared.

When I told her I was writing a book about cornbread, Ronni sniffed haughtily. “Well,” she said, with disdain, “
I
could write a book about cornbread. It would only be one page long, however.”

¼ cup butter or bacon drippings

2 cups fine stone-ground white cornmeal

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

1½ cups buttermilk

1.
Preheat the oven to 450°F.

2.
Place the butter or drippings in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet and pop the skillet in the oven to heat.

3.
Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a small bowl, beat together the egg and buttermilk. Add the wet mixture to the dry, using the absolute minimum number of strokes needed to moisten dry with wet.

4.
Remove the hot skillet from the oven and swirl it around so the butter or drippings coat the bottom and lower sides of the skillet. Then pour the remainder of the hot butter or drippings into the batter, and stir a couple of times.

5.
Turn the batter into the hot skillet, put the skillet back into the oven, and bake the cornbread until it is golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Serve, hot, in wedges from the pan.

M
AKES
6
THIN SQUARES

“Sure, you can use my grandma’s cornbread in your book,” said my friend Nora, an Atlanta freelance writer, who grew up on and off with her grandparents in a small town about an hour outside of Birmingham. “But you have to write down
exactly
how you do it. And no last name; very few of my friends even know I cook, and I don’t really—just my memaw’s cornbread.” I wrote it down faithfully, but Nora made a few disclaimers: “Well,
she
used to make it not
quite
this way. She used to use bacon fat when I was a kid, but I can’t bring myself to, and lately, even she’s started using oil.”

Vegetable oil cooking spray

1 cup stone-ground white cornmeal

½ cup unbleached white flour

1½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1½ teaspoons sugar

1 cup milk

½ cup buttermilk

1 egg

¼ cup mild vegetable oil

Butter, for serving (optional)

1.
Preheat the oven to 450°F. Spray a 10-by-16-inch baking dish (“Memaw always used glass”) with oil.

2.
Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl, whisking or stirring well to mix. In a small bowl, beat together the milk, buttermilk, egg, and oil. Add the wet mixture to the dry, using the absolute minimum number of strokes needed to moisten dry with wet.

3.
Transfer the batter to the prepared baking dish and bake it until the top of the cornbread is golden brown and springs back when touched, about 20 minutes. If it’s not nicely brown after 20 minutes, transfer it to the top rack of the oven and give it 5 more minutes.

4.
Serve, hot from the pan if possible, with butter.